


Romance Improbable

by willowoak_walker



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 08:38:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowoak_walker/pseuds/willowoak_walker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Each chapter stands on its own.<br/>Each is a snippet of a relationship, some of which cannot coexist, some of which can.<br/>Chapter four is a digression: feel free to skip it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Friend in Need

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caducus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caducus/gifts), [miihakeka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miihakeka/gifts).



Jim walked into Bones' quarters on a night about halfway through the Enterprise's five-year mission, and was mildly surprised to find the doctor sprawled in Engineer Scott's lap, in the middle of a highly context based snarky comment.   
“-- nothing about even 21st century queer theory, much less modern gender dynamic studies, so-- Dammit, Jim, don't you knock?!” Scotty closed the book he had apparently been reading from and put it on the bedside table.   
“Captain, good evening,” he said. Jim grinned at the pair of them.   
“I was coming over to commiserate with Bones about the deficiencies of the Security personnel’s training program, but it looks like you've got something better going on. I'll go chat with Spock about how to fix them, instead.” Bones looked remarkably sane and sober for someone who had lost a patient that morning, so whatever Scotty was doing was working. Jim might have to give him a raise.  
Bones winced and shifted in Scotty's arms. “Better knock on _his_ door; he'll probably go all Spock-choke on you if you violate his precious privacy.” Scotty chuckled and gave Bones a gentle squeeze.   
“Aye, you'd better be careful with that Mr. Spock, sir, he's a fiesty one,” he added easily.   
Jim felt his smile growing larger. It was good to see them so comfortable with each other; he'd been worried. “I'll be polite, Mom, I promise. You two have a good night.” He left them to it.   
He practically whistled as he walked over to Spock's. Bones had finally found someone he was willing to let take care of him! The high lasted all the way to Spock's door, when he remembered that he was there because someone had died under his orders.


	2. My Lady Fair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I need to figure out what on Earth I'm doing about this one.

It was never an exclusive relationship-- Orion's just weren't made for that. But it wasn't really about the sex. The sex was good, but it wasn't the important part. The important part was Gaila-and-Nyota, was that they knew who they actually were. It was simply the most defining relationship of both of their lives. Even back in the academy, when they were roommates (you do not fuck your roommate, that's just stupid) they were still each other's Most Important Person. Part of Nyota's irritation with Spock was that he hadn't even put her in with Gaila when he took her off the Enterprise.   
Then they sailed into the wreckage-- and it just didn't really sink in. She kissed Spock in the turbolift, thinking, “When I tell Gaila about this, oh, how she'll laugh.” It took her the fight with Nero to realize that Gaila was dead.   
She held herself together for almost a week after that, but she could feel her sanity slipping through her fingers. She found herself in the gym late at night, practicing Tai Chi as a hand-to-hand method, as if that would have let her save Gaila.   
The Captain – Captain Kirk – won her respect when he presented her with plans for Gaila's memorial. It was beautiful. Not sexually obsessive, but still presenting her physical beauty. Not saccharine, but displaying her kindness and generosity. Not coldly professional, but rejoicing in her professional skills. It drove her loss home in ways that made the grief seem cleaner, somehow. Uhura didn't manage to leave the room before she began crying, but his eyes were wet as well, and somehow as they wept together she lost the ability to really hate him.   
He never teased her about it, either.  
When they got the news that the _Intrepid,_ combing the wreckage of ships, had found an airtight compartment containing seven half-starved but living cadets, (list appended), and Gaila was on the list, was credited with keeping them all alive, was one of the battle's new heroes, it was all Uhura could do to respect other people's grief. She managed, barely, to make it back to her quarters before she began to sing.   
“My lady has come back!” She sang. “Lo, my lady is fair beyond belief, a wondrous woman, she! She has returned from her far exile, and is come home to me!”


	3. If

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Angst

Cadet Christopher Pike was a first year when George Kirk came back to take the advanced command course, changing promotion tracks. He'd been fascinated by the golden, glowing man. It had been hero worship at first, but George had taken an interest in him, and as he discovered that there were things George couldn't do (cook, for example) it turned into a real friendship. Winona Kirk had been just as fascinating. A capable, courageous woman, she'd been improving the warp drive in ways he didn't really understand. He hovered around the edges of their marriage and did a lot of babysitting. 

Perhaps that wasn't healthy, but he couldn't help it. 

The evenings when all three adults were sprawled around on the chairs, studying or inventing, and baby Sam gurgled in his crib remained some of Christopher's happiest memories.  


The soft and inclusive kisses came as a surprise. They started with Winona, an even greater oddity.  


By the time they got around to making it, the invitation to join their marriage when he was done with his training and they had finished their next tour of duty was not surprising at all.

Nor was the way Winona broke after her husband's death. She had been fragile before they married, and losing him, and her ship, and giving birth was too much strain. And Christopher had no legal standing with her. He was not her husband yet, and he was no kin to her – he never got to go to her bedside during her convalescence. He always regretted that. Because, surely, surely, he could have done something. Given her a love to live for beyond her work.  


(It wasn't healthy to think like that.) 

But when she was declared sane again, she sent him a letter throwing him out of her life. 

Christopher wrote a paper on George because he could not marry him. He wrote a paper on George and did not love again.  
He knew it wasn't healthy. He couldn't help it.

He met Jim while breaking up a bar fight. He looked at the child he had had no part in raising, torn and battered. He couldn't say, “I'm disappointed in you.” He had no right. (He was disappointed in himself.) He said, “Your father would have wanted you to be more than this.” (I want you to be more than this. More than this broken whore, with no ambition and no passion but self-destruction.) He managed not to hate Winona only by hating himself.  
He knew it wasn't healthy. He couldn't help it. 

He listened to Jim because the description roused some memory of when he had first heard of George's death. He listened because he wanted the boy to be right about something.  
He went into Nero's ship, at Nero's command (he realized later) with some vague thought of being like George.  
He watched George's son sail his beautiful ship into the stars, and he tried to be content with High Command.  
He waited as George's son dragged back the Kelvin's remains; he was sitting in his wheel chair when they beamed down. He was sitting there when George appeared with his son. He was staring in astonishment, totally immobile, when the rest of the welcoming party exploded to envelope the Kirks. He was still sitting there when George waded through the crowd to him.  
He was only roused from his stupor when George dropped to his knees beside the wheel-chair and kissed him.  
Admiral Christopher Pike forgot the rest of the world and his own damaged legs, dragged himself half out of the chair to get a better angle, and kissed his lost-and-found lover back.  
And if that wasn't healthy, well, he couldn't help it.  
He felt the best he had in years.


	4. Conflation, or, Interstices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a poem, related to the previous chapter, which probably doesn't belong here but is going here anyway.

(Chorus)  
Kiss my lover  
Lost-and-found  
Tip over the wheel-chair  
I can't find the ground

Woke up this morning  
My feet hit the floor  
You wrote me an email – I  
Can't stand alone anymore

I offered you aid,  
And you took it, too  
More than I could stand to give  
I still can't stand without you

(Bridge)  
I only offered to babysit  
close the door, and end the tears  
But bruised eyes find no hugs to fit  
You left me with no feet but fears

Lent you my scissors,  
To cut his long hair,  
Took the buttons from my shoes,  
You brushed my braid into a snare

All our joy has died,  
we are both bereft,  
Left us only craftsmen's pride,  
And loving is not my craft,

My nerves will grow back,  
in a year or two,  
Then I'll have some friends alone,  
I can't yet walk without you.

(Final Chorus)  
Kiss no lover  
Lost or found  
Step out of my wheel-chair  
And stand on the ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did say it didn't go.


	5. Linguistics of Engineering

He was never quite sure how someone as intelligent, capable, and beautiful as Nyota came to be friends with someone like him, but he half-suspected that it had something to do with his response to discovering she was reconstructing historical Gaelic. He'd asked her to teach him-- the language was beautiful and he didn't want to see it lost. That had somehow become conversations on every subject imaginable, and attempts to translate modern literature into Gaelic, which had somehow turned into kisses, which had naturally become more intimate, until – until she almost died on an away mission, and once he'd beamed everyone back he couldn't leave her bedside. That had turned into this.  
* * *  
She was never entirely sure why a genius like Scotty started coming out of his work to befriend her, but she suspected that it had something to do with the fact that when her replicator broke she went down to Engineering in person and asked him to teach her to fix it. That had led to lessons about engineering theory and jargon, which somehow wove into her own work, and trips around the Enterprise, fixing and improving things, which became kisses, and went further, until – until Scotty went into a coma when the warp core was damaged, and she was an extra pair of hands for Keenser to get the ship stable again, until she was sitting at his bedside being no use to anybody. This had come next.   
* * *  
Jim was not really sure when Scotty and Uhura started dating – it seemed that one month, if you asked Scotty where Uhura was he'd have said, “Who?” and the next month they were the most adorable thing on his ship, going around babbling in their own little language and fixing things. Then they both nearly died, and then they'd both, separately, gotten rings made, and then managed, in what Spock called, “A fascinating display of simultaneity” to propose to each other at the same time. They had both said yes, _of course_. Which meant that he should try to control the grin: this was very important to them. He tried to look serious, but he was so happy that by the time he'd finished saying, “Dearly beloved” he'd given up. This marriage would, after all, still be legal if performed by grinning Captain.


	6. Admiralty Interference

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is oddly structured ON PURPOSE!

“Kirk here”

“Sorry, Admiral?”

“Well, I'm romantically asexual, and sexually aromantic, so – ”

“That comment was extremely sex-rom superior. There is nothing wrong with being arrow or ace. I am disappointed that you are sufficiently prejudiced to say that I will become sexually romantic with age, and that I am abnormal as I am.”

“I am not cheating on anyone. They each know about the other, and are pleased that I satisfy the urges they don't want to deal with with their counterpart.”

“Oh, sure, blame the Orion. If you're so worried about Lt. Uhura's feelings, why aren't you talking to her?”  
\---

“Uhura here.”

“What?”

“No, we have an open relationship. Gaila has sex with anyone she wants to. This gives me a chance to sleep.”

“No one has as much sex drive as an Orion.” 

“No, not even the captain.”

“I either chat with Dr. McCoy, play music with Spock, or take a little me-time. Or sleep.”

“Well, his partner is off having sex too.”

“He's ace. He finds it highly unappealing. Like eating emergency rations, he said.”

“Well, why don't you ask her?”  
\---

“Gaila here.”

“Of course I know! I don't know how Leonard puts up with him. He's great in bed, but he's a real jerk sometimes. I much prefer Nyota.”

“She doesn't have that much of a sex drive. No human does.”

“Oh, I don't think so, but you should ask him.”  
\---

“McCoy.”

“Has anyone submitted a complaint citing inappropriate behavior?”

_“Then you have NO right to ask that!”_  
\---

“Spock here.”

“Admiral, I believe Mr. Sulu and Mr. Chekov have reached a suitable conclusion to the discussion regarding what language their children will be taught.”

“To what other 'romantic situation among the bridge officers' do you refer?”

“Ah. The Captain engages in sexual intercourse with Lt. Gaila, and in romantic behavior with Dr. McCoy. Lt. Gaila and Lt. Uhura engage in both sexual intercourse and romantic behavior with each other. Mr. Sulu, Mr. Chekov, and I engage in friendly interactions with all of them. All parties are satisfied with this situation. Does this clarify matters?”

“At such time, I will return to New Vulcan and my bondmate.”

“Such prejudice is immoral and emotional. Please do not refer to such relationships as 'adulterous puddles' again. Good day.”


End file.
